1. From Dreams to Reality

By Fernando Velez

Ever since I can remember, I have been attracted to men. I used to watch telenovelas with my mom and we would both stare at the male protagonist — but for me that attraction came with fear. It made me feel wrong. I didn’t understand how something you couldn’t control could be considered a sin, but I learned very early that parts of me had to stay hidden.

I grew up in a conservative, religious family. My father struggled with alcohol, and my mother worked nonstop just to keep food on the table. When I was five years old, my six-year-old brother died of cancer. That was the first time I understood that someone could lose the chance to dream before their life had even begun.

I carried that with me. He would never get the opportunity to imagine a future — but I could. And I refused to waste it.

His absence never really left our home. After his death, I became a second parent to my younger brother while still being a child myself. Grief, and responsibility, became normal. There was no space to fall apart, so I learned how to disappear into my imagination.

I was always curious about life. About what existed beyond what we could see. I joined every school club I could. Sometimes I barely went to class because I was always running to some activity. But art was where I felt alive. Acting allowed me to be someone else for a while. Learning scripts taught me that people could be different and still belong in the same story. That’s when I started to understand that entertainment wasn’t just about fame, money, or tickets.  It was a way to connect people and make us feel less alone.

Music was my first freedom. I would ask not to be picked up from school so I could walk home for hours with a cassette player, letting my mind escape. With music, I imagined worlds. I wrote everything — ideas, scenes, questions, and characters all lived in my notebooks, which were the only places where I felt completely safe.

At family gatherings, everyone seemed so divided. Some would gather around the TV, others would stay quiet. And I, the gay kid in the closet, would sit apart from them, watching how people who shared blood could feel like strangers. I could see how much pain was being carried from generation to generation. I didn't understand why they couldn't just be a close-knit family.

One day, I decided to try. I organized a family event at my aunt’s indoor garden. I said we were going to have a show, but first we had to dedicate it to something meaningful. 9/11 had just happened, and the images had shaken me deeply. I spoke about the people who would never see their families again. About how hatred, religion, politics, and ideology divided lives. I watched my family sit together, emotional, united in silence. Then I played a song and danced softly with my cousin. It was simple and silly, but it worked. They loved it.

After that came more events, Mother’s Day competitions, games, Christmas shows. Little by little, the family started asking what was next. Without knowing it, I was already doing what I would spend my life doing: using creativity to heal and to bring people together.

Then my aunt told me about auditions at an art school and offered to take me. That was the moment everything became real. I was discovering my identity and had to choose between living my truth or letting fear control my life. I came out. And the people who were supposed to protect me tried to change me. Religious camps, psychiatric hospitals, isolation, and devices taken away became my norm.  My world became smaller and darker. I attempted suicide more than once.

But my notebooks were still
there, and no one could take them away from me.

During that time, the world was at war in the Middle East. I wrote a story about someone with special abilities who could stop war and save humanity, but that person was gay. I remember asking myself: would he save a world that would never save him? That question stayed in my mind. Is humanity even worth saving?

I didn’t know it then, but that question would become the heart of everything I would create.

I slept in my car while I worked collecting signatures for political parties, just to earn enough money to eat. I ended up in the hospital for malnutrition and lost everything I had, to the point I only had what I was wearing. I worked in plays, radio, and movies. I wanted to move to Mexico to study art, but all I could afford was Orlando. So Orlando became my first step where I worked multiple jobs such as washing dishes, as a host, serving and retail.  

One day I answered an ad on Craigslist for a talk show, Caso Cerrado. I appeared in one episode, and soon after I moved to Miami believing that knowing just one person was enough to open a door.

While working as a server, a producer called asking if I knew anyone in Orlando who could help find talent. I quit my job in the middle of my shift, drove straight to Orlando, gathered people, organized rehearsals, and stepped in to run the cases myself when the producer was suddenly fired.

That night, another domino fell. I was hired as a production assistant. Within months, I was producing segments and working on telenovelas. I was only twenty years old.

Working at Caso Cerrado (Like Judge Judy Spanish Version) Telemundo, I entered a strongly macho environment. Aside from hair and makeup, there were very few openly queer people in production. Once again, it felt like we didn’t exist. But now I had a position where I could create visibility. I began producing queer-focused cases, and they quickly became some of the highest-rated segments — until I was told to reduce them and stop creating so much LGBTQ-centered content.

The industry was not always gentle. While working on telenovelas, a casting director implied that my career could advance through sexual favors. I felt disrespected, reduced and small, so I walked away. At the same time, my amazing boss had become so personally intrusive that she even attempted to control parts of my dating life.

I was just 20 years old, and one day, exhausted by how I was being treated, I packed everything into my car and drove to New York without knowing where I would sleep or what I would do. I stopped at the last rest area before entering the city and spent the night there.

Sitting in the car that night, I stared at the Kraven Entertainment logo on my phone, the one I had created years earlier in Puerto Rico when I first envisioned forming a company that would give a voice to my community. Looking at it reminded me why I had left Puerto Rico — to follow my own dream, my own vision, not someone else’s.

From that day on, life became a long stretch of getting fired, being rejected, falling apart, pulling myself back together, hitting bottom, losing everything, rebuilding, and repeating the process so many times. But the dream stayed intact beneath all of it, untouched by fear, doubt, or the constant pressure to give up.

And today, I am proof of what can happen when you believe in yourself. Believing in yourself is the most powerful tool we have, especially when no one else does. When you are the only one standing between what is possible and what isn't.